Photo sharing and the fine print.

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Photo Critiques Welcome

There are a number of photo sharing sites available and they are pretty handy tools. There are some things in the terms that are worth being aware of. When you post your photos you are granting the service a license to use your photo but the degree that they can use the photo varies.

Flickr (Yahoo), has what appear to be the most reasonable terms. Photos posted to publicly accessible areas of a group can be used “…solely for the purposes of providing and promoting the specific Yahoo! Group to which such Content was submitted or made available.” Photos posted to non-group areas can be used “…solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available.” The license exists only as long as you have your photo included in the site and terminates if you remove it.

Picasa (Google) has a similar license, “The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services…”

Photobucket is another popular site but their terms seem a bit less reasonable. “When you make your Content public, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to copy, distribute, stream, post publicly display (e.g. post it elsewhere), reproduce and create derivative works from it (meaning things based on it), anywhere, whether in print or any kind of electronic version that exists now or is later developed, for any purpose, including a commercial purpose.” You also grant other Photobucket members the right to copy, display and use your photo.

As tiresome as wading through the legal might be it is worth taking the time to see what you are agreeing to.

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